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Ways to Succeed in Affiliate Marketing

Having someone else decide your future does not appeal to people who like to decide their own future. These are the type of people who want to steer their own course for the future; being able to take the path any way they want. They want to follow their dreams not someone else's and are ready to take an adventure that will last a lifetime.

This very mindset is the reason why more people are joining one of the most popular online businesses-affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing affords the individual an opportunity to decide their own future while helping others decide theirs. There are no time schedules, no commutes, and no one to tell you about the work that has to be done. The be an independent affiliate marketer you only need a desire to succeed in this type of business and you will achieve all you have dreamed about. Desire and time is all that is needed to follow your dreams.

So other than desire and dreams is there anything else you need to succeed in affiliate marketing? What do you need to do in order to be successful in this industry? First of all you need to be aware that there is a lot of competition, so you need to find your niche and strive to be above the herd.

Through my own experience I have broken it down to 5 essentials tools to achieve the satisfaction that only comes when you achieve your goals. These 5 tools are a must for anyone to have if they are going to stand out from the rest of the crowd.

1. Learn and be trained: For those who have never done anything like this before you will be in unfamiliar territory and it can be scary if you are not properly trained; you could get lost in the herd of affiliate marketers online. You will need to learn the tricks of the trade for every aspect of the marketing game. You will also need a to understand that knowledge will give you an advantage over others in this business.

2. Willingness to invest time and effort even if you don't see results. Many times people give up too soon and the results are just around the corner. It might be several months before you will even see that first results in the form of profit. Patience and perseverance are important. It is those qualities that will stop someone from giving up after investing a lot of there selves into the business.

3. Self-determination. You have set the goal of success in affiliate marketing therefore you must have the ability to keep pushing yourself. Never having to say quit is a quality each and every affiliate marketer should possess, and the ability to motivate oneself into reaching new goals is an ability that would actually take an affiliate marketer to their set goals.

4. Discipline. Teach yourself to work each and every day with all the enthusiasm you can gather, then you are close to achieving what you have set your heart to having in the first place.

5. Optimism. Negative attitudes and hearsay have no place in an affiliate marketer life and in making that life better for himself and for everyone concerned. Never allow outside influences your attitude toward the business; because once you start a business, you must be the head of the company and the leader of all it entails.

The components to success in any online business such as affiliate marketing are varied, but the most important thing one needs to be able to make it big lies in the individual. It is the individual who has the ability to do everything that will ultimately lead to prospects, and the desire, which feeds his drive, is the fuel that will keep the affiliate marketer going.

Affiliate marketing is all about putting one's destiny into one's own hands. The right attitude is the key to being able succeed in an unfamiliar territory where peace of mind will be found.

Pros and Cons of Third Party Online Affiliate Networks

Online affiliate marketing has taken the internet by storm and has proven to be a highly effective way of maximizing website revenue. Why limit yourself to selling your own products when you can profit by selling somebody else's too?

There are thousands of individual affiliate programs offered on the internet, many being through third party affiliate program networks such as OffersQuest, Commission Junction and Linkshare. These companies connect a large number of advertisers and publishers together via their own network. Advertisers sign up through their network to have publishers promote their products and publishers sign up to access a large network of advertisers all at one location. In the process, the affiliate network makes a profit via advertiser set-up fees, monthly account maintenance fees, commissions, etc.

The question is, as a publisher, is it worth using these large affiliate networks or is it better to form direct partnerships with advertisers?

The GoodThe primary selling point of third party affiliate networks is convenience. As a publisher, one registration gives you access to tens, even hundreds of advertisers simultaneously. Tracking partner performance is easy, there is only one technical support contact, things are easier and simpler to manage, and best yet, payment is received as one convenient monthly lump sum.

The BadBecause as a publisher you're utilizing a service, advertisers who also offer a direct affiliate partnership will typically offer a lower commission for publishers who choose to partner with them through a third party network. This is because it costs advertisers money to use the services of a third party. Also, without naming names, some affiliate networks have been known for not tracking sales and leads properly as honestly as they could be (which means money from your pocket). Payment thresholds can often be fairly high - a $50 US minimum is common for international publishers. Finally, a payment delay of two months or more from the date of a sale/lead generation can occur, as the third-party affiliate network waits until the advertiser pays them, before they pay you (the publisher).

ConclusionIn many (if not most cases), having both options of partnering directly with an advertiser or through an affiliate network is not a choice - it's usually one or the other. If an advertiser you like only offers their affiliate program through a third party, you're limited to the advertiser network they've partnered with, or not partnering at all. Affiliate networks are not bad programs to use, just keep in mind the issues outlined above, and you'll be making money in no time!

Veronica Dubak is the owner of the successful SurveyBounty.com, http://www.surveybounty.com free online paid surveys directory. With a comprehensive listing of market research companies classified by region, and background information on the online survey industry, SurveyBounty.com is the legitimate source for online survey information

Choosing Affiliate Programs

One of the key elements of making affiliate programs work for you is choosing the right program or programs for your site. This article discusses general considerations for getting a good match. For more about the benefits of an affiliate network, see the article "Advantages of Using an Affiliate Network."

Your Search—Open-Ended

Some people start to hunt for an affiliate program in a spirit of being open to anything. In this situation, you might seek programs in a variety of locations and representing products from a wide range of groupings. You could start, for example, with an affiliate program directory, and look through the entire range of programs, which typically include the following categories, and more:

Art & Music
Automotive
Books & Media
Careers
Clothing & Accessories
Commerce
Education & Training
Entertainment
Family & Lifestyles
Financial Services
Food & Drinks
Gifts & Flowers
Health & Beauty
Home & Garden
Insurance
Recreation & Leisure
Shops & Malls
Sports & Fitness
Telecommunications
Travel
Web Services

Amazon.com and eBay are two large affiliate programs within which you could shape your own specialty area. There are many that are smaller and more focused.

Your Search—Focused
But let's say you already have a site or that you have a particular interest in mind from the start. You can still use an affiliate program directory and just be more selective about your categories. But what would you want to select?

If you have a product for sale yourself, say a gadget you invented and patented for hanging trousers without imprints or creases, try to choose complementary products that either:

• work with your product
• are thought of in connection with your product
• make your product necessary
• extend the use of your product

For your ingenious trouser hanger, this might lead you to clothiers and closet designers. BUT . . . you would want to avoid anyone selling a competing hanging product that your visitor might choose in lieu of yours: no reason to give your competitors free advertising! The connection between your product and the advertised product will ensure that visitors to your site are highly likely to be interested in the products of the merchants you're affiliated with.

One way to come up with good ideas is to visit the websites of your competitors. Look around and see what types of affiliate links they have. You may want to imitate them or one-up them. In either case, the research might give you some fresh ideas. It's also a good idea to visit the merchants sites and see who they link to: this might give you some more ideas.

If you don't have a product, but do have a website, you may have a little more flexibility about what you choose, because your topic focus is likely to be a bit broader than one gadget. In this case, try to think of the different types of people who might be interested in your site and what other products would appeal to each distinct group.

For example, if you show Maine Coon cats and have a website devoted to the breed, you might get visits from cat fanciers, on the one hand, and families who are simply looking for information while considering purchasing a pet on the other hand. The specialists and the folks with a more casual interest is not an unusual split for this article has all rights reserved and is copyright by 100 Best a website to draw, so think about both. In any case, be sure to choose products and services that you can stand behind with enthusiasm.

Whoa, Nelly!

Signing up for affiliate programs may seem very attractive, so make sure you don't get carried away. Doing it right means a time investment, and if you have separate tracking for each program, this will mean extra time sorting out the analysis of each merchant's product or service and making plans for your next campaign.

What to Look For

Of course, another important aspect of your search is the terms of affiliation. Here are some good questions to consider as you contemplate joining an affiliate program:

• How much is the commission?
• What action is required for the commission to be triggered?
• What is the number of "Return Days"?
• How often are checks issued?
• What kind of tracking is used and what do the reports detail?
• How is the problem of click fraud and other types of fraud being handled?
• How available is the merchant?
• Is the merchant interested in working with affiliate-generated ideas and concepts?
• Is the program one-tiered or two-tiered and how exactly do the payments work?
• Does the merchant have a good reputation with existing affiliates?

Finding the Perfect Affiliate Program

Every now and again we webmasters will come across one affiliate program that out-performs the rest; the affiliate program that converts clicks to sales as fast as you can send traffic. If you haven't yet found your "Golden Goose" affiliate program, read on to learn how to spot the one in a million.

Discovering an affiliate program that blows the others out of the water requires a fine balance between three key factors: recommending a quality product, buyer-friendly website design, and lastly, affiliate program payout.

Quality Product
You may be able to succeed for a short while recommending a faulty product, but get-rich-quick schemes like that are not the way to find the cash-cow affiliate program. Find a good quality product/service to recommend to your website visitors. Choose an upstanding established company who emphasizes customer satisfaction. By teaming up with a good company and quality product you are on the right track.

Buyer-Friendly Web Design
It does you no good to send precious traffic to poorly designed websites that can't convert your clicks to sales. The perfect affiliate program takes the traffic you send instantly by the hand and leads them to a sale. Bad design is the sales enemy and customers can click away as easily as they came, leaving you commissionless. Be certain that you send your traffic to affiliate programs that can make a sale.

Affiliate Program Payout
This last tip should be fairly obvious to webmasters familiar with affiliate marketing; however, many casual affiliates who don't know they could be making big money overlook choosing an affiliate program with a high payout. The best affiliate programs are willing to pay their affiliates well. This means high bounties, longer cookie duration, and recurring payment on repeat customers if possible.

The perfect affiliate program factors in the three key elements of affiliate success: choosing a good product, with a great website and a terrific payout. Sending your website traffic to these types of affiliate programs will turn your hard-earned traffic into revenue.

How Do Affiliate Programs Work?

Perhaps you're thinking about starting or joining an affiliate program, but first you'd like to have a better idea of how they work. This article will help you understand a bit more about the mechanics of an affiliate program.

If you've read the article "What Are Affiliate Programs?" you now know that an affiliate program is a paid referral system with several important parties: a merchant with a product or service to sell and that merchant's affiliates. When visitors come to the affiliates websites, they find an introduction to the merchant's products or services. This might occur through a banner ad, a pop-up ad, an image ad, or a text ad provided by the merchant, as well as through content dreamed up by the affiliates that expand upon, amplify, or explain the product or service in more detail. When visitors click through to the merchants site and a sale is made, the affiliate gets a commission.

First Steps
An affiliate program gets its start when a merchant decides to create one. The merchant may create the program in-house using the services of a programmer or a coordinator using purchased software or may opt to contract with a web-based tracking service or join an affiliate network. It's a good idea for the merchant to test the system—whichever it is—from the affiliate's point of view, to make sure that all is well.

After this, or during the set-up, the merchant creates advertisements for his or her affiliates to use. These may take many forms, as indicated above and open-minded merchants and this article has all rights reserved and is copyright by 100 Best networks will work closely with affiliates, encouraging them to come up with their own marketing ideas. Participation of affiliates is then solicited through a variety of means.

Here Come Affiliates
When affiliates respond to advertising and join the merchant's affiliate program, there is usually some communication before an agreement takes place. The potential-affiliate's website may be checked to assure a good fit. If both parties agree to enter into a business relationship, a contract detailing both parties rights and responsibilities and the commission set-up is agreed to.
Important elements of the contract include the amount of the commission, what has to happen for the affiliate to be paid, and the "return days" – the length of time after the initial visit by a customer coming from the affiliate's site for which the affiliate will get credit for that customer's purchase. A long "return day" period is better for the affiliate, as it allows time for the customer to comparison shop and acknowledges that, having learned of the site fro the affiliate, the customer may later return directly to the merchant's site. Programs differ on which affiliate gets credit if a customer clicks through from multiple sites. The tracking software is set-up to follow the new affiliate's site.

The Payment System
The merchant pays the affiliate when a customer who has arrived at the merchant's site via the affiliate's site within the "return day" period does whatever action has been agreed upon that triggers payment. This could be, for example, signing up for a product or service. The payment is referred as the Cost Per Action (CPA) or the Cost Per Sale (CPS), depending on what the agreed trigger is. This is all in the care of the tracking system, which may also generate the payment.

For more about using an affiliate program to sell the products and services of others, see the articles, "Advantages of Using an Affiliate Program" and "Choosing the Right Affiliate Program for Your Site."